I Cannot Breathe For You As Well
by Sandrine Shaw
Summary: "You're not going back," he says, matter of fact, and it's obvious that 'not' means 'never', that he has no plans of letting her go. [A canon-divergent AU from "Finish Line" where Savitar kidnaps Iris when he leaves S.T.A.R. Labs.]


**I Cannot Breathe For You As Well**  
by Sandrine Shaw

"How long are you planning on keeping me here?"

Iris almost manages to steady her voice, keeping out the anger and the fear that make her want to simultaneously lash out at and recoil from Savitar. Since he's sped her out of S.T.A.R. Labs and into his ridiculous secret villain lair, he's barely paid any attention to her. There are no chains on her, no locked doors holding her back, but she's under no illusion that she could just stand up and walk out, back to her life. That Savitar won't stop her before she even gets near the door.

He's ignored her earlier attempts to engage him in conversation, and she doesn't expect an answer now, either. When he turns to look at her for the first time since she tried to reason with him back at S.T.A.R. Labs, she all but jumps, nerves and surprise making her heart speed up.

A faint smile ghosts across his lips, devoid of humor.

"You're not going back," he says, matter of fact, and it's obvious that _not_ means _never_ , that he has no plans of letting her go.

Her eyes sting with tears she refuses to spill in front of him. She isn't going to give him that kind of satisfaction, not when he's already taken so much else. "So we're back to you killing me then."

It takes an effort to hold his gaze, a silent gauntlet thrown down when she remembers his reluctance to meet her eyes just a few hours ago, the shame rippling over his ruined face when he looked at her. Has it all been an act? Did he always plan on just using their kindness – _Barry's_ kindness – to get close enough to make them drop their defenses so he could steal her away? She thought, for a moment, that he was genuine. That the way he'd closed his eyes and leaned into her touch when she'd reached out and put her hand against the scarred skin had been real. But then, she's always been prone to believing the best in people, and perhaps the idea that there's someone wearing Barry's face who's all bad had simply been too horrible for her to accept.

This time, Savitar doesn't seem to have any problems facing her.

He takes a step forward and crouches down in front of her – close enough that she's looking straight at the milky paleness of his right eye, the angry raised scar tissue, close enough to get lost in all the little details of how he is and isn't Barry.

When he brushes his fingers against her cheek, a mirror gesture of what she'd done at the lab, she jerks back, hitting her head against the edge of the desk she's leaning on. She winces. The pain is almost a welcome distraction.

His smile turns cruel, but he draws back his hand.

"I'm not going to kill you."

It should come as a relief, but something about the way he says the words – the certainty, the sense of triumph – suggests that this isn't him giving up. It's the opposite.

She wonders if maybe he's forgotten that he's becoming a paradox. That every minute she stays alive is changing the timeline in an irreversible way, erasing his existence. All she needs to do is bide her time and wait for the Black Flash to come for him.

It's that hope that makes her strong enough to pull herself together and smile at him; a smile like the punch she wishes she could throw to knock him off his feel. "Alright. Since I assume that also means you're not going to starve me, what's for dinner?"

He speeds off to get them Thai, nondescript boxes that give no indication whereabouts in the city they're holed up, if they're even still in Central – not that she could do anything with the information. He's gone and back before she gets to her feet.

He's so fast. All she can do is hope that the Black Flash will be faster, well aware of the irony of waiting for someone who used to be Zoom to save her, trading one monster for another.

* * *

Time moves slow as molasses, hours that feel like days, days expanding into weeks. Iris wonders if it's worse for him, if his speed makes it all stretch out endlessly, especially when all they do is sit around and wait. She's waiting for his fate to catch up with him. What he's waiting for, she doesn't know and doesn't care to ask.

It must have been around day three that she realizes that there's no rescue coming. No Barry flashing through the door with some crazy, half-baked plan to defeat his evil double, no Black Flash pulling him into the Speed Force.

She doesn't understand, not until Savitar explains. "All I needed to exist is for him to lose you. And he did."

"Bullshit. He didn't lose me. I'm still —"

A small, private smile on his face, almost mischievous in its exultance, and it looks so much like Barry's that it makes her heart clench in the best and worst possible ways. "It doesn't matter that you're not dead. You're lost to him, one way or the other. He's not getting you back."

And that's... That's _insane_ , because it means that he really thinks there isn't an end date to her imprisonment. "You can't keep me away from him forever, not unless you do kill me."

"Can't I?"

He steps into her space, catching an errant strand of her hair with gentle fingers and tucking it behind her ears in a mockery of a caress. The anger and the shock of what he's planned are pumping adrenaline through her veins, and that's the only thing that keeps her from flinching.

"What, you're just gonna keep me locked up here until I die of old age? Didn't you plan on becoming a god? Don't tell me you're happy now with playing prison guard."

"We don't have to stay here. This —" he spreads his arms, motioning around the room. "It's all just temporary. We can go wherever you want to go. Do whatever we'd like to do. But Barry's never going to see you again."

It's almost impossible to wrap her head around the idea, to imagine the sort of future he thought out for her – for both of them – and think that he could consider it to be something desirable. "You're insane if you think that I'll just go and _play house_ with you."

"It's funny, because you're the one who gave me the idea. You and Barry, with your whole 'we can help you, you don't have to do this' speech." He scoffs. "Insisting I could live a normal life. I didn't really think about that before. It surprised me how much I wanted it. But I don't want to sit at the back of your wedding like the disfigured twin no-one likes. Standing by and smiling while Barry lived the life I was meant to live."

"That life was never yours to take!" she cuts in hotly. It's an instinctive rebuttal she can't hold back. She knows she's made a mistake the second the words are out of her mouth.

Savitar recoils, hands balling into fists, and for a moment Iris is afraid that he'll strike her, a superspeed punch knocking the life out of her.

But he doesn't touch her, even if his voice turns into an angry roar, full of rage and anguish. "I _was_ Barry. I used to live that life. I was the one who fell in love with you and kissed you and made love to you. I was the one who tried, so hard, to save you. Who watched you die."

He's shaking, as if the memory's still haunting him, and she can see it: Barry, trying (always trying so hard) to prevent the tragedy, racing against time, against fate. Trying and failing. One death too many (hers) on what he feels like is his conscience, one more person he couldn't save. She understands why it would break him. Why it broke him.

What she cannot understand is how he gets from there to being the monster that caused it all, how he could become the very thing that he was fighting against. He had to break Barry to exist – but why he'd even want to exist like that remains a mystery to Iris. She doesn't dare ask.

* * *

She dreams about Barry. The feeling of safety with his arms around her. The way his mouth slides against her. His hands undressing her with lightning speed, small sparks of electricity dancing over her naked skin. But when he covers her body and pushes into her as she pulls him down for a kiss, his face changes before her eyes and he turns into Savitar.

In her dream, she isn't surprised. It doesn't scare her, doesn't shock her, as if that's the way it's meant to be. She still lets her fingers card through his hair and arches her back towards him when he fucks her with measured, slow thrusts, restraining that thirst for speed that she knows burns under his skin.

When she comes, she calls him _Barry_ , the name a breathless gasp on her lips, and he looks at her like she's his entire world, like he'd tear down the fabric of time itself to keep her.

That's when she wakes up.

It feels like the air has been punched out of her lungs, like the ultimate betrayal her subconscious could deal her. She's so wrapped up in the messy tangle of guilt and revulsion and arousal and humiliation that it takes her entirely too long to notice that she's not alone.

Savitar is leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest as he watches her. There is a moment when his face remains unguarded, when his expression is full of longing and hunger that makes the remnants of heat in her stomach coil tighter and the flush on her cheeks deepen. But as soon as he realizes that she's awake, he schools his features into scorn.

"Good dream?"

He raises a mocking eyebrow, and the shame she feels is washed away by anger.

"Yes. Always, when I dream about Barry." She delivers the lie with a vindictive little smile. There's a miniscule flinch rippling across his features, and she thinks _good_ and _go to hell_.

It's a tiny victory, but she will take it.

* * *

It upsets him when she talks about Barry so, naturally, she brings him up every chance she gets, namedrops him into every conversation to make sure that Savitar knows that he's but a poor substitute, that his attempts to take Barry's life as his are doomed to fail.

Most of the time she's just doing it to get a rise out of him. It's different when it's something that actually matters to her. "Are you still getting new memories? From Barry?" she asks, and her heart beats in her throat as she waits for him to answer.

For a long moment, it doesn't seem like he's going to.

Then he looks at her, eyes narrowed into a speculative expression. "Do you want to know if he's still looking for you?"

"Is he?" Iris wishes she could make her voice sound all cool and disinterested, nonchalant as if the question hasn't been burning on her mind for too long, but she's not that good at pretense, not about things she cares about.

Savitar doesn't respond, but the tightening of his jaw, the angry flat line of his mouth are answer enough. If Barry had given up, Savitar wouldn't let the chance pass to rub it in.

Her heart swells with emotion, and Iris can't hold back the smile at the thought. She hates that Barry has to go through this, but she loves that he's not giving up, that he hasn't lost hope yet.

"He's never going to stop looking," she tells Savitar. She's not sure about many things; but of this, she's certain. Barry is never going to let her go, not unless she's dead and cold in front of him. (Even then, he might not, she thinks, remembering his parents and all he did to save them. She doesn't want to follow that thought. She knows how this story ends.)

Savitar's face twists into a scowl. "We'll see."

* * *

He's watching her, all the time, and as much as he likes to pretend that it's all about guarding her, they both know it's a lie. He could still kill her, if it was all about breaking Barry. But that's not enough for him anymore. He wants every part of Barry's life that he can get, in all the ways he can have.

If he could, if that wouldn't permanently manifest his status as a paradox, she thinks he'd prefer to kill Barry and take his place. _Become_ Barry, for all intends and purposes. But that's not an option, and so he's using her. Using her to plunge Barry into darkness, but also using her to create a parody of the life that's not his.

 _I was the one who fell in love with you_ , he told her, and Iris wonders if he's convinced himself that he still does. That this twisted mess of jealousy and possessiveness is _love_ or desire. If he thinks that just because he looks at her like he owns her means she'll ever be his.

The anger she feels at his presumptuousness is making her bold, it's making her want to push when she knows she should be in retreat, making her do things she otherwise wouldn't do.

She climbs into his lap with an assertiveness that seems to shock him (it shocks her, later, when she thinks about it), rotating her hips against his, making him gasp.

"Is this what you wanted?"

"No, I —" His protest falls away when she leans in and covers his mouth with hers.

He tastes devastatingly familiar.

He shouldn't. She should be able to taste his rottenness in every hidden corner of his mouth. He should taste sour and bitter and stale, and the way he's angling his head into the kiss shouldn't be the same as Barry does. The sounds he makes should be different. That needy little gasp Barry makes when she touches the sensitive spot behind his ear. The way her name comes tumbling from his lips with reverence and desperation.

If she closed her eyes, it would be easy to pretend that it's Barry under her.

She keeps her eyes open as she fumbles to undo his pants, looking straight at him as she pushes up her skirt and takes him inside of her. The scar tissue of his cheek is rough against her palm, her cheek, her lips. His mouth falls open and she kisses him before any words can come out.

One of his hands curls against her hip, clenching and unclenching in the soft silk of her blouse, like he doesn't quite know if he dares to make contact. Like he hasn't touched or been touched with anything but violence in so long that he's forgotten how to, and when her hand covers his, she feels his fingers tremble underneath hers.

She doesn't know what she's trying to prove, but for a few minutes, she almost forgets that her life is steadily falling apart.

* * *

Caitlin— no, _Killer Frost_ tracks them down, and her rage makes the room temperature drop instantly, raising goosebumps along Iris's arms.

"You said you'd become a god, instead you're hiding away like a coward."

Savitar steps towards her. No suit, no weapon, just him, and he's never looked more dangerous. "Don't you dare — "

"All you had to do was kill her, but you just can't do that, can you? Just like I knew you couldn't." She flings the words at him like icicles, sharp and piercing, designed to hurt.

Lightning dances in Savitar's eyes. "I could kill her. I just don't want to."

Killer Frost scoffs. "All this talk about being the God of Speed, but when it comes down to it, you're still just Barry. Hopelessly in love with your childhood crush. Well, you know what? You clearly still care about Iris, but I don't."

She turns and raises her hand, and Iris expects a shock of cold so icy that it'll freeze her on the spot.

Instead, there's a sickening crack as Killer Frost's neck snaps at lightning speed, as easily as a twig breaking apart in Savitar's hands. She tumbles to the ground in a heap, her head twisted at an awkward angle, and Iris is at her side before she makes the conscious decision to move.

Despite the pale skin and the white hair, all Iris can see is Caitlin. She holds the lifeless body of someone she used to call a friend in her arms, and the tears in her eyes are the same parts anger and devastation. "You didn't need to do that."

"She was going to kill you."

"That doesn't mean— She's still—" Iris swallows when her voice breaks. "There would have been another way," she finally says quietly, even if she doesn't quite believe it herself. Caitlin was already too far gone.

"That's what you said about me," Savitar says. "And look where it got you."

* * *

When he sleeps, he looks like Barry. Those harsh lines of resentment and bitterness that twist his features when he's conscious smooth out and relax until all that's left is the familiar face of the man she loves. With his body turned to the right, the scars hidden away by the pillow, the illusion is complete.

He's a light sleeper. She knows from experience, from the few times she tried to steal away in the dead of the night and was slammed against the wall with an unforgiving hand closing around her throat before she could make it out of the room. So when she hears him mutter something under his breath, at first she thinks he's awake.

But his eyes remain closed, and he starts tossing and turning, face contorting in anguish.

She wants to let him sleep, vindictively pleased at the hold the nightmare has over him. He deserves it, he deserves all of this and more. It's not in her nature to feel pleasure at someone else's pain, but there's an odd satisfaction in watching him succumb to what she assumes to be the terrible memories of the things he's done.

But when her name escapes his lips, halfway between a broken plea and a sob, she finds herself reaching out, touching his shoulder.

He jerks away, sitting up so abruptly that lightning sizzles through the bed, and his fingers close painfully around her wrist. She wonders what it must be like, being unable to tell apart a soothing touch from an attack, how someone like Barry could ever become so distrustful and broken. (Though she knows how, she _knows_.)

"You were having a nightmare," she says quietly, willing herself to relax in his grip to convey that she didn't mean him harm.

His chest is still heaving with heavy breaths, but his eyes on her are sharp and awake, suspiciously watching her every move.

She swallows, trying to fight down the stirrings of pity she feels when she looks at him. "Wasn't that the whole idea of becoming Savitar? Be a god, so you wouldn't feel pain anymore?"

Savitar sends her a withering stare that seems to say, _were you really so naive to believe that would work?_ She thinks the better question is: was he?

* * *

It takes Iris too long to notice that something's wrong.

When they've stayed at the same place for weeks, she thinks Savitar is getting bolder, that he feels safer. That maybe Barry has stopped looking for her. (She doesn't want it to be true, doesn't imagine he ever would; but it's been so long, and all her certainties are blurring.)

She hears glass shatter and comes running – later, she'll stop and marvel at the fact that it's something so mundane that changed everything, but right then, she thinks (hopes) they're being attacked. Instead, she finds him mopping up broken pieces from the kitchen floor.

"What happened?" she asks, tentative, because she doesn't want to cross him when he's in the mood to throw things.

He shrugs and doesn't look up at her. The strangest thing is that he seems upset, but not angry. "Nothing. It fell."

Something's wrong with that story, something's off, and it doesn't dawn on Iris that the glass never should have hit the ground when Savitar could have reached it a million times on its way down until he yells in surprise and his hand comes up red. Blood drips on the floor from a wound that's not healing, and Iris gasps.

"Your speed..."

He chokes on a laugh, bitter like bile, cradling his hand, and they both watch the crimson stain on the white tiles. "Yeah. I've been getting slower."

"How slow?"

He doesn't answer.

There's no conscious choice, no plan that spurs her into action. One moment she's hanging back in the doorway looking at this grotesque mirror image of the man she loves bleeding onto the kitchen floor, the next she's standing over him with a knife at his throat, blade angled upwards. She can't remember moving, can't remember stepping into the room and taking the knife from the block, like it all happened too quickly for her to comprehend. Like she's the one with the superspeed.

But she's not. She's human and so is he, for the time being, and she knows there's still enough strength in him to knock the knife from her hand.

He doesn't. He raises his head at her, the motion stretching his throat and making it go taut against the blade, blood oozing from a shallow cut. The sight of it almost makes her pull back the knife. Almost. Not quite.

"Come on then. Do it," he says, and the eyes when he looks at her are hollow and lifeless.

Her hand tightens on the hilt, fingers clenching so hard that her knuckles turn white and the knife trembles with the tension drumming from her shoulder to her fingertips.

Savitar doesn't move, doesn't sway away from the blade, offering himself like a sacrifice at the altar of her vengeance. "I tried to kill you. I kidnapped you. I stabbed your friend. I ruined Barry. I deserve to die."

A thin line of blood runs down his throat from where the knife cut him to the neckline of his shirt. It would be so easy, she thinks. All she needs to do is draw the knife to the side, with almost no amount of physical effort or strain.

But she's tired of him using her as a tool to further his own agenda. Be the sacrifice necessary to make him a god. The woman whose love would somehow save him. Judge, jury and executioner when he finds himself failing. Savitar keeps writing and rewriting his story and pushes her into a supporting role, expecting her to fall in line. She did that for long enough.

Her fingers flex and let go.

The knife clatters to the floor. They both jump at the sound.

There's surprise on Savitar's face. Betrayal. Resignation. His expression is every bit as easy to read as Barry's, even now (especially now), or perhaps Iris just knows him a little too well.

Reaching out, she lets her hand rest once again against his cheek. She watches him close his eyes and lean into the touch, and the _déjà-vu_ makes her heart clench. It's been almost four months since they stood like this, back at S.T.A.R. Labs. She wishes he'd made a different choice then, but when it comes down to it, it wouldn't have changed a thing.

"I don't know what you deserve," she says quietly. "But I can't be the one to give it to you."

She pulls her hand back and walks away.

End.


End file.
